As a Biden administration takes shape, Federation of American Hospitals President and CEO Chip Kahn hopes Democrats and Republicans can “return to normalcy and civility” and address the health and economic toll of the pandemic.
Chip Kahn, president and CEO of the Federation of American Hospitals, talked with Modern Healthcare Managing Editor Matthew Weinstock about what the industry can expect during the early days of the Biden administration.
FAIRFIELD-SUISUN, CALIFORNIA
Refrigerated boxes of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine at the Seminole County Vaccine Point of Dispensing Site in Florida, before its opening, on Monday, Dec. 28, 2020. (Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda/Orlando Sentinel/TNS)
Covid-19 vaccines sit at hospitals as doctors, pharmacies await doses
WASHINGTON Stephen Nuckolls, who runs a North Carolina health care medical group called Coastal Carolina Health Care, has deep freezers capable of storing the two authorized Covid-19 vaccines and hundreds of staff ready to give it. But after two weeks of emailing the North Carolina health department, he couldn’t get a supply.
“My medical practice and many others have mostly completed our annual flu shot clinics and have staff and freezers (yes -70c) standing by to administer the shots,” he wrote in a Dec. 23 email to the Medical Group Management Association, a Washington, D.C.-based trade group representing independent practices. “But despite our repeated emails to
Arkansas is experiencing some of the highest rates of COVID-19 cases in the country. At the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences, the situation has forced leaders to look at different ways of deploying nurses, including a greater reliance on team-based care.
The years-long battle involved mudslinging and big spending by some of Washington's most powerful healthcare industry interests. The chaotic final sprint ended with major capitulations to healthcare providers.